EVM-VVPAT case: Supreme Court to pronounce judgement today

New Delhi: Amid ongoing General Elections, the Supreme Court is scheduled to pronounce on Friday its judgement on pleas for 100 % cross verification of VVPAT slips with EVMs counts in final counting of votes.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta would render the judgements on petitions filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms and others.

A total of 89 Lok Sabha seats across 13 states and Union territories will go to the polls in the second phase on April 26.On April 24, the apex court had reserved its judgement after hearing Deputy Election Commissioner, EC's counsel senior advocate Maninder Singh and a battery of advocates Prashant Bhushan, Santhosh Paul, Sanjay Hegde and others for the petitioners.

In its last hearing, the court had said it can't control election or be a controlling authority of another constitutional body, Election Commission and it can't act only on the basis of suspicion as not a single instance of mismatch between EVM and VVPAT data has been shown.

It had also noted till date there has been no incident of hacking identified and if there is some incident, law provides what is to be done.The court also said any candidate in the polls can show if there was any mismatch in the 5% VVPATs counted.

The petitioners, on their part, had contended the voter has right under Article 19 and 21 of the Constitution to cross verify vote as cast by him and counted by paper vote of VVPAT in accordance with the purport and object of directions of this Court in Subramanian Swamy case (2013).In 2019, the SC had directed for raising the VVPAT counts from one to five randomly selected machines in an Assembly segment.

The petitioners said cross-verification and counting of all VVPAT slips is essential to the interest of democracy and the principle that elections must not only be free and fair, but also be seen to be free. They also said while the government has spent nearly Rs 5000 Crores on purchase of nearly 24 lakh VVPATs, presently VVPAT slips of only approximately 20,000 is verified.